Modern Eloquence: Vol III | Page 6

any obligation that we assume, and I feel sure that in the coming years this great race of ours will have shown strength and resolution enough not only to preserve itself, to preserve the great heritage our fathers have given us of civil liberty here, but also to carry it to the isles of the sea, and, if necessary, to the nations beyond the sea. Of one thing I am very sure, that had our fathers been called on to solve this problem they would have solved it, not in the light of a hundred years ago, but in that of the present.
Among the problems that confront us we have one great problem, already alluded to indirectly to-night. You do not have it here in the North as we have it with us in the South, and yet, I think, it is a problem that vitally concerns you too. There is no problem that can greatly affect one section of this country that does not affect the other. As I came into your city to-night I saw your great structure across the river here, binding the two great cities together and making them one, and I remember that as I came the last time into your beautiful bay down yonder, I saw what seemed to be a mere web of gossamer, a bare hand's breadth along the horizon. It seemed as if I might have swept it away with my hand if I could have reached it, so airy and light it was in the distance, but when I came close to it to-night I found that it was one of the greatest structures that human intellect has ever devised. I saw it thrilling and vibrating with every energy of our pulsating, modern life. At a distance it looked as if the vessels nearest would strike it, full head, and carry it away. When I reached it I saw that it was so high, so vast, that the traffic of your great stream passed easily backward and forward under it. So it is with some of these problems. They may appear very small to you, ladies and gentlemen, or to us, when seen at a distance--as though merely a hand-sweep would get rid of them; but I tell you they are too vast to be moved easily.
There is one that with us overshadows all the rest. The great Anglo-Saxon race in the section of this country containing the inhabitants of the South understands better than you do the gravity of that great problem which confronts them. It is "like the pestilence that walketh in darkness, the destruction that wasteth at noonday." It confronts us all the day; it is the spectre that ever sits beside our bed. No doubt we make mistakes about it; no doubt there are outbreaks growing out of some phases of it that astound, and shock, and stun you, as they do ourselves. But believe me, the Anglo-Saxon race has set itself, with all its power, to face it and to overcome it; to solve it in some way, and in the wisest way. Have patience and it will be solved. Time is the great solver, and time alone. If you knew the problem as I do, my words would have more weight with you than they have. I cannot, perhaps, expect you even to understand entirely what I am saying to you, but when I tell you that it is the greatest problem that at present faces the South, as it has done for the last thirty years, I am saying it to you as an American--one of yourselves, who wants to get at the right, and get at the truth, and who will get on his knees and thank God for anyone who will tell him how to solve the problem and meet the dangers that are therein.
Those dangers are not only for us, they are for you. The key to it, in our opinion, is that to which I alluded but just now; that for the present, at least, the white race is the torch-bearer of civilization, not only for itself, but for the world. There is only one thing that I can say assuredly, and that is that never again will that element of the white race, the white people of the South, any more than you of the North, consent to be dominated by any weaker race whatsoever. And on this depends your salvation, no less than ours. Some of you may remember that once, during that great siege of Petersburg, which resulted, in the beginning of April, 1865, in the capture of the city and the overthrow of the Confederacy, there was an attempt made to mine the hitherto impregnable lines of General Lee. Finally, one cold morning, the mine